Great Idea (an Insider's Exclusive)

Before I begin, I would like to give a shout-out to my dear friend Jessica who recently posted a story similar to this one on her blog. Jess, it may seem like I'm cheating on some blog test by stealing your topic, but I swear I had this written before I read yours. Cross my heart and hope to die.

That out of the way, here we go.

So here's a good idea for ya:

1. Buy a pair of really cute checkered flats because you only own one other pair of shoes, and the pair you do own have been worn so thin at the bottoms that you can feel gravel through them.

2. Wear said flats around the house for approximately nine minutes until you feel that you have sufficiently broken them in.

3. Land yourself an interview in Seattle on a day during which you have no access to a car, so you are thereby forced to walk to the bus stop. Wear your flats, after deciding against wearing flip flops just to the bus (because it's raining and you don't want to slip) or tennis shoes because 1) you don't want sock marks, and 2) you don't want to have to lug around a pair of tennis shoes in your bag.

4. Get lost looking for the correct building in which your interview is to take place in fifteen minutes, and feel the start of puss-filled blisters form on your heels and pinky toes. Feel the discomfort of where the flats dig in to your bones right below your big toes. Begin to regret the decision to wear flats.

5. Interview. Hobble back up Seattle's satanic hills to the bus stop and climb aboard the bus when it pulls up thirty minutes later. Fantasize about drenching your cute checkered flats with gasoline and lighting them on fire.

6. Arrive in Woodinville, take one step (the first in a series of steps that will continue until you reach your house over 1/4 mile away) off the bus and feel the skin of your right heel split apart. Look down and notice blood beginning to stain the back of your nice new khakis (which it took you nearly four hours of grueling shopping to acquire). Take another step, and notice that with each consecutive step it feels as though a tiny invisible demon is jabbing a meat cleaver into your heel.

7. Contemplate walking home barefoot, but decide that doing so would make you look like a freak, and you care way more about image than comfort.

8. Arrive home, limping. Recall the following line from Mrs. Doubtfire: "If I ever find the misogynistic bastard who invented heels, I'll kill him." Decide that even though you weren't wearing heels, flats are close enough. And you share the sentiment.

9. Clean and bandage your wounds. Throw the flats into your closet with more force than you had intended and vow to leave them there in the dark...until, of course, the next time they match your outfit.